The personal blog of Reyn Bowman, a Durham NC resident, 40-year veteran of community-destination marketing and still an explorer in community sense-of-place. Opinions expressed here are those of the author.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

6.7% Is Not A Mandate

It may just be “sword rattling” or post-election hubris which is understandable. But hopefully the incoming Congressional leadership will take the advice of some of their members and “be humble” and see this as a second chance.

The blog fivethirtyeight computes that only 6.7% more votes were cast for Republicans nationwide in Congressional races than for Democrats, hardly a mandate for anything but bi-partisan “cooperation.” And exit polls revealed that more people support the healthcare reform legislation than oppose it which is astonishing considering all the millions of dollars spent on disguised campaign ads to distort it.

I can only believe that Representative Boehner is sincere and hopefully he’ll heed his own advice and listen to the “people” and the “people” are clearly divided. Distorting healthcare reform may have been a good way to energize enough voters to move the needle slightly but 6.7% is a very slim margin on which to govern.

According to exit polls, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Relatively few voters cited tax cuts or even government spending compared to getting the economy moving. Governing in our representative form of government means rising above special interests and small factions no matter how energized or threatening and representing “all” of the people by making tough decisions about solutions to “long term” problems.